


Enamored of the Parting West -

by tortoiseshells



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: (but what is fanfic but speculation persevering?), F/M, Mentions of Period-Typical Racism, Mostly Fluff, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 02, Slice of Life, entirely speculative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:14:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29971029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/pseuds/tortoiseshells
Summary: Travel was hard; the rails commandeered for troops and munitions and provisions, the slaughterhouses of Chicago (Samuel observed, wry and wary all at once) sending bacon and salt-beef to a whole different series of butcheries back East.Samuel Diggs goes to medical school in Chicago; Charlotte Jenkins manages everything else in Alexandria.
Relationships: Samuel Diggs/Charlotte Jenkins
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Enamored of the Parting West -

**Author's Note:**

  * For [middlemarch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/gifts).



He had an unexpected talent for happiness, Charlotte sometimes thought – not that it was at all surprising that Samuel Diggs was happy, only that it cropped up in ways surprising and not, altogether like snowdrops and crocuses popping up in the spring. His letters were full of news, promising full accounts of all he had seen and who he had met and what he had learned in Chicago at Rush Medical College: sketches of flowers, of sutures, of the clouds scudding across Lake Michigan – a place she never expected to see. What was sunny, she passed along through the camp and school – good news, even in ‘63, even after Meade sent Lee back to Hell and Virginia – being in short supply and too precious to hoard. The weather out West sounded vile, and some of the people worse; she only committed the first to paper, though it didn’t make the conviction that, Dr. Foster’s influence or not, Samuel had more than his fair share of dragons to slay.

(An unexpected thought, that, but Charlotte taught anyone who came to her, whether they were nine or ninety, and the children and grandmothers alike had done with enough horror in their lives; a fairy tale now and then was a kind of sweet, wasn’t it? Just like maple candies or ginger cake.)

Travel was hard; the rails commandeered for troops and munitions and provisions, the slaughterhouses of Chicago (Samuel observed, wry and wary all at once) sending bacon and salt-beef to a whole different series of butcheries back East. Even when he had time between sessions, it was up in the air to see if he could make it back to Alexandria. In ’64, when he couldn’t get away, he sent a package with a friend, Jacob Avery, with the 29th United States Colored Infantry on its way East, and then into history. 

Charlotte cherished everything he sent her: the medical texts, the newspaper clippings, the inquiries from men and women in the same situation as Charlotte’s people, even pressed flowers that promised the coming of this spring and the next. At the bottom of the package delivered by Jacob Avery was a length of silk, simultaneously the color of sunflower-petals and that of Samuel Digg’s warm voice on the long, terrible days they’d shared, during the typhoid outbreak in ’62. What didn’t go into the finest dress she’d ever owned she turned to trim and ribbons, and she smiled to see it blossom around her: in little Ruby Martin’s hair ribbons, in the lapels of John Maguire’s wedding vest, in the trim of Belinda’s own new dress. She only had to remake it slightly, in ’65, when Dr. Diggs came home to Alexandria, and Sergeant Avery stood up from him in the hospital’s dusty little chapel.

**Author's Note:**

> [jomiddlemarch](https://jomiddlemarch.tumblr.com/) on tumblr prompted: _He had an unexpected talent for happiness._ for a 'give me a sentence and I'll write the next five!' challenge; this got a little long. Or I selectively can't count.
> 
> Rush Medical College in Chicago was the alma mater of Dr. David J. Peck, the first Black man to be granted a medical degree from an American medical school; it seemed like a likely candidate for Samuel's formal education, if he decided, post S2, to pursue his degree ; the 29th United States Colored Infantry Regiment (sometimes? abbreviated USCI) was mustered in Illinois in 1864, following 1863's Emancipation Proclamation and the Union Government's policy shift to allow for the raising of Black regiments (mostly with white commissioned officers, though not NCOs). The 29th's first major action was the Battle of the Crater during the Siege of Petersburg, and served through the end of the Appomattox campaign.
> 
> Title, as is Tradition, from Emily Dickinson. :D
> 
> Sorry this is so belated, friend!


End file.
